7 Mar
2011
7 Mar
'11
3:47 p.m.
In article <4D74F972.18273.17219F8 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
There were math co-processor boards (AM9511, AM9512,
for example) for
S100 systems. ISTR that there was even a TRW bipolar (16x16? Huge
chip that ran hot as a pistol) for the S100 bus.
TRW and Weitek both made hardware multiplier chips for digital signal
processing applications. Exactly when the chips were introduced, I
don't know, but they were certainly present in the mid 80s.
All mainframes of the time that I'm aware of had
floating-point
multiply. Many had floating-point divide (or a mechanism for getting
there). Many lacked integer multiply and divide.
The IBM 701 had hardware multiply. I'm not sure about divide. This
was 1953.
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